Okay guys, it's embarrassing story time.

I'll start.

It was a roasting hot summer afternoon, probably around 1990'ish. We're talking the dog days of summer - sweltering. I took my recurve and my uncle's freebie Whitetail II bowand walked over to my buddy Toby's place to fling some arrows with Toby and Mark (our other partner in crime).

Everytime we got together, things always started off harmlessly, and usually ended badly. This day would be no different. On this particular day, wekicked off our festivities by walkingdown to the local sportsmens club and digging through the brush behind their targets on the archery course, picking up some new (gently used) arrows to monkey around with. Fresh, non-bent arrows were a hot commodity at that time (for us at least). It didn't matter if the fletchings were rotted off, really, as long as they had a nock andflew.

With a fresh dozen or soof non-matching arrows in hand (multiple colors,a variety ofshafts and lengths), we go back to Toby's farm (his dad farmed horses), and set up to shoot the haybales out back.

We started off shooting at Pepsi cans, but that deteriorated into taking weird angled shots, seeing who could break the other guy's arrows. Next thing you know, somebody's hat is up there as a target, and gets a 2117 shaft driven through the bill. Somebody had pepper spray, and we tried to spritz down the neighbor's cat with it. Harmless kid fun.

Now it's turned into a hunting contest. We're headed across the fields, each of us with bow-in-hand, looking for tweetie birds to shoot. This is a true skill competition. This was the superbowl of archery. Nobody wanted to lose.

I'll never forget this: Toby says "OOH, there's a big starling!" I see it too - maybe 40 yards out, just on the top of a rise in the hill, through a tiny opening in a thick green rose bush. You could make the outline of a nice-sized blackbird. He saw it first, so he got the shot.

Toby draws and takes aim, as we all await the outcome. . . .He's really focused, staring down that 40-yard pin like Randy Johnson in Game 7.Waiting... Waiting... Finally, helets go of the stringand the arrow takes flight. (Keep in mind what a lincoln log aluminum warclub would look like flying at 40 yards out of a 1980-something Bear Whitetail bow). It was like lobbing telephone poles - slow motion, as the arrow sailed toward the target.

The arrow and fletchingsdisappear into the lush green rosebush- at first glance, it looked just high.

There we all stood, shoulder to shoulder, waiting impatientlyto see the lucky blackbird take flight, when all of a sudden, Toby's dad's prized blackmare stands up from behind the bush and trots away. LMAO

Apparently, what we all saw was the silhouette of the horse's ear or face or something... apparently it wasnot a blackbird, as the three geniuses had suspected.

Dear god was that the funniest thing I've ever seen.

We caught up to the horse, andchecked its head for wounds - it was a clean miss.

If his dad would've seen what we did, he'd have killed us all. LOL